Deep Impact

Heritage Foundation

WHO DOES ROBERT BLUEY SUPPORT FOR PRESIDENT?

“It might be hard to believe, but I haven’t decided who I’m rooting for in 2008,"
said Bluey. "Candidates on each side of the political aisle have attractive qualities. At this point,
however, no one has put the whole package together.”

Where He Got his Start

Rob Bluey grew up in upstate New York and graduated from Ithaca's Roy H. Park School of
Communications, where he edited the college’s award-winning newspaper, the Ithacan.

Rob Bluey ’01 Makes the News in New Media

“What really sold me about Ithaca was the fact that I could get involved from day one at the
Ithacan,” says blogger Rob Bluey ’01. Bluey, who graduated with a degree in journalism, has
become a one-man riptide under the wave of the “new media” that is drastically altering the
way Americans get their news. Bluey, webmaster of BlueyBlog.com has already had an impact on journalism
and 21st-century American politics.

“Blogging,” says Bluey, “allows anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to
have a printing press. It has changed the world for the better, connecting people and bringing them
information that wasn’t easily accessible when I was in college.”

Just in case you have any doubts about blogging’s importance to politics and the media, consider
this: “The example of then-Senator George Allen getting caught on tape uttering [a racial slur]
is most often cited as a turning point in that Senate race largely because liberal bloggers forced the
mainstream media to pay attention to a story that would have otherwise never been covered,”
explains the conservative Bluey. Because of attention from bloggers and other media around the country,
Allen lost his Senate race and his bid as the possible GOP nominee in the 2008 presidential race.

Bluey and other bloggers have been churning behind the scenes for years, and their work has also seen
radical results nationwide. Remember Dan Rather? The renowned CBS 60 Minutes news anchor
suffered a lethal blow to his career during the 2004 presidential race between John Kerry and incumbent
George W. Bush, and this former Park student was right in the thick of things.

“I was covering the 2004 election,” Bluey remembers, “often looking for stories that
the mainstream media wouldn’t touch. Shortly after arriving at the office on September 9, 2004, I
was handed a sheet of paper featured the night before on a CBS 60 Minutes program about
President Bush’s National Guard career.”

It was at this moment the presidential race experienced its first big turnaround. Says Bluey,
“My boss asked if I could identify what was wrong with the document. I studied it and noticed it
was typed in a font that resembled Times New Roman, which is common on computers today but wasn’t
around in 1972.” The documents had been falsified.

Once Bluey filed his story on cnsnews.com, the traditional news media began to catch on. “Just a
few minutes after my story was posted on our website,” Bluey adds, “the Drudge Report [an
online news service run by webmaster Matt Drudge] linked to it, shining a huge spotlight on the
report.”

More investigative pressure from independent bloggers and forensic typeface experts forced Rather and
CBS to backtrack. On September 20, 2004, Dan Rather stated, “If I had known then what I know now,
I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the
documents in question.” Such is the power of bloggers like Bluey.

Dan Rather's Thoughts on Internet Journalism

Rob Bluey is an example of how convictions can combine with a first-rate education to produce
opportunities to be on the cutting edge of the communications field. Ithaca College and the Park School
of Communications are never far from Bluey’s mind in his job as director of the Center for Media
and Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. “It’s safe to say I may
have never come to Washington had it not been for the encouragement and help of my professors at
Ithaca,” Bluey says.

Hands-on work is the hallmark of a good college experience. “What was great about Ithaca was
that I got to do so much off campus as well,” he remembers. “I spent one summer in Traverse
City, Michigan, as a newspaper copy editor and also worked at the Los Angeles Times during the
2000 presidential election, a great experience that I’ll never forget.

“The opportunities I had on and off campus, as well as the great connections I made with other
students, have been a tremendous help throughout my career,” Bluey adds. College is the key that
opens the door to global conversation, and the Park School at Ithaca College has an eye toward the
future. Here at Ithaca, you can ask yourself: How will you change the world?

Fuse Outlets

Fuse is a student produced publication about the Ithaca College experience. All content in the print and web versions of Fuse is developed by current Ithaca College students in a breadth of different areas of study.